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Cover artwork: Christ and Madonna by Robert Campin (c1375/80-1444)Philadelphia Museum of Art, John G Johnson Collection / AKG-Images, London

Reviews

This is a neatly selected group of pieces … I’m happy to live with the women’s voices (I mean: what voices!) and a certain sameness in the interpretations for the absolute clarity, the absolute efficiency, the certainty that nobody is messing around with you. These are authoritative performances that can stand the test of time' (Gramophone)» More

'The complex cross-rhythms in the Credo are adroitly handled. Although the performance is a semitone lower than modern pitch, movements such as the Gloria keep their brightness…You can hear their enthusiasm in the exultant finish of the Gloria and the sublime melodic meditations in the Sanctus and Agnus [of the Ave Maris Stella Mass]' (BBC Music Magazine)

'There are moments when the Tallis Scholars' beautifully shaped performances seem almost too seraphic, too smooth, but that's a minor quibble' (The Guardian)» More

'The provenance of the two great works here, the Missa De Beata Virgine and Missa Ave Maris Stella, both canonically intricate and based on plainchant, is secure … there are moments when the Tallis Scholars' beautifully shaped performances seem almost too seraphic, too smooth, but that's a minor quibble' (The Guardian)

'Marking the midpoint of the Tallis Scholars’ complete projected Josquin cycle, the two works here, based on plainchants, are masterpieces both … for those who revel in structural listening, Phillips and his charges provide readings of remarkable textural clarity. But they also sing with supercharged expression' (The Sunday Times)

'The recorded sound is up close and personal, putting you right inside the music … an essential buy from a team who never put a note wrong. Excellent, informative booklet-notes too' (Classic FM Magazine)

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Introduction

With this recording we come to two of Josquin’s most intense canonic Masses, both based on plainchant themes. They make an intriguing pair. In his own lifetime the Missa De beata virgine was probably the most performed piece that Josquin had ever written; yet ironically it now presents inter­preters with some unusual challenges. The Missa Ave maris stella, by contrast, is compact and fluent, the use of the chant melody always beautifully clear – potentially a useful setting for modern choirs in a liturgical setting. Both Masses show Josquin experimenting with tex­tures, motifs, mathe­matical constructs, anything that took his fancy, never predictable – and creating a nightmare for people today who want to try to date anything that Josquin wrote after his earliest works, since there seems to be little actual maturing of the style; just more experi­mentation within it. And to show how diverse he could be with the same material, we have included a Creed which may represent his first thoughts in setting a melody which later he set twice more (see John Milsom’s note).

The Missa De beata virgine survives in no fewer than sixty-nine sources, at the last count, making it by far the most widely disseminated of his Masses. Admittedly some of these are very incomplete transcriptions, but in five important choirbooks it stands as the opening number. This popularity is fascinating, since to us the music lacks obvious unity. Nowadays we want a multi-movement polyphonic Mass-setting to be bound together in an audible way, like a symphony or a concerto; and in many settings from the six­teenth century this is managed by using a model, whose main features are quoted regularly through­out. But in De beata virgine the only unity is provided by the very old-fashioned technique of quoting chants associated with a common theme: in this case feasts of the virgin. Thematic and even tonal unity are therefore sacrificed to liturgical propriety: the fact that from the Credo onwards the four-part texture is expanded to five, by means of canon, suggests that the work was not even conceived as a complete musical unity, since the four-voice Kyrie and Gloria do not have this device.

Paraphrased plainsong is the main construc­tional principle, using chants in differing modes (in movement order: modes I, VII, IV, VIII, VI). Indeed these modes are so varied that it has been suggested Josquin was deliberately creating a virtuoso exercise in modal relationships – making this the (unusual) raison d’être for the whole enterprise. Maybe, though it certainly leads to unpopular things for modern choirs like uneven voice-ranges (and the Creed has to be transposed up a fourth to make it work at all). So what are the rewards? They are subtle, but can be as evident to us as they clearly were to the first listeners.

The main delight is in the canons, on which the five-voice movements (the Credo, Sanctus and Agnus) rely. All three movements have two chant-based voices in pure canon at the fifth; and to intensify the impact of this Josquin decided on occasion to write triple-time melodies over and around the canons. This led to the most famous passage of all: the section in the Creed which begins at ‘Qui cum Patre’. For theorists as far removed in time from Josquin as the middle of the eighteenth century this proved to be irresistible material, and it was quoted endlessly. The two tenor parts indulge in simple canonic declamation, while the altos and basses take up the music of both. Over this the sopranos sing a slow triplet melody of effortless beauty. One can only guess at why so many writers, from periods when polyphony had long since been a dead art, were so impressed by this, but elegance in complexity must surely have been one reason.

If the Missa De beata virgine is one of Josquin’s last works, Missa Ave maris stella must be earlier, having been published by Petrucci in 1505. If one believes in the charac­teristics often ascribed to the middle-period works of creative artists, this setting illustrates many of them. Here is a Mass based throughout on a famous chant melody, building to three canons in each Agnus Dei. The writing every­where is smooth and assured, giving the impres­sion that Josquin was relaxing with techniques he had tried out before, in a more youthful way. (This brasher style is attractively on display in the ‘Cambrai’ Creed, track 6, included here as an extra item.) His handling of the chant melody Ave maris stella (a Hymn, the first verse of which is sung here as track 7) is a model of how to use motifs derived from a cantus firmus structurally over a long span. This is sometimes done in imitation, but the cross-references are so protean (one could almost say symphonic) that one comes away realizing there is little fat on these bones. My favourite piece of motivic tautness is the Amen of the Gloria. It only lasts nine bars but a whole world of perfection is there: the motif presented firstly as a duet, then a trio, then a pell-mell working in all four voices.

So tight is the compositional argument that the Agnus Dei canons are upon the listener before he realizes it. In this sense the whole setting might well be called a Missa Brevis. Strangely, it is only in the Sanctus that Josquin allowed himself to expand the style, with an unusually long trio at ‘pleni’, duets in the Benedictus and a big Hosanna. The Agnus then immediately carries one off into a different space, the central motif, which is well established by now, turning over and over on itself like the music of the spheres. This is surely Josquin at his most inventive and his most inspired.

Exactly what music did Josquin compose? The question is tricky for all manner of reasons. First, it now seems likely that in the decades around 1500 more than one musician called ‘Josquin’ was actively composing, and it is sometimes hard to know whether or not a specific piece is correctly by ‘our’ Josquin – which is to say, the man known from documentary sources as ‘Jossequin Lebloitte dit Desprez’. Second, the demand for new works by Josquin evidently out­stripped supply, and counterfeits were almost certainly being created both during his lifetime and long after his death. Some of these forgeries are fine pieces in their own right, but excellence is no proof that they were written by ‘Jossequin Lebloitte dit Desprez’. Third, reputedly a whole host of younger composers studied with Josquin, and exercises could have been written during their apprenticeships that bear traces of the master’s guidance or intervention. Small wonder if such works should then bear attri­butions to ‘Josquin’. Fourth, according to Heinrich Glarean, Josquin released his new compositions to the public only after keeping them to himself for deliberation and refinement. By implication, some works may never have been finished to his own satisfaction, and would have been available to few people if indeed anyone at all.

Into which of those categories might the Credo quarti toni fall? This piece survives by the skin of its teeth, in a single manuscript in Cambrai copied around the time of Josquin’s death. Some authorities have questioned Josquin’s authorship on the grounds that the piece was so little circulated; but Josquin did have links with Cambrai stretching back to his childhood, and the manuscript firmly ascribes this work to ‘Jossequin des Prez’. Moreover it has been copied in the company of two Masses securely by Josquin, the Missa Gaudeamus, which features earlier in the manuscript, and the Missa De beata virgine, which is placed directly before the Credo, again attributed to ‘Jossequin des Prez’. On these grounds, Josquin’s claim to the Credo quarti toni really ought to be taken seriously. But what of its musical content?

Some experts reckon the piece to be stylistically uncharacteristic. Matters change, however, when it is viewed from the perspective of how it was made. Its composer has taken one of the most familiar of all medieval melodies, the plainchant formula commonly used to sing the words of the Creed, and has miraculously converted this tune into a tight canon for tenor and baritone. Both voices sing the outline contours of the chant, but they start on different notes – the tenor a fifth higher than the baritone – and at slightly different times. To accom­pany them, the composer has added two superb outer voices, an alto and a bass, both of which move athletically through exceptionally wide ranges, sometimes singing very low, elsewhere very high. Although the four voices perform together for much of the time, in places the canon falls silent, leaving the alto and bass to cavort on their own. And elsewhere it is the outer voices that take a rest, the texture reducing to its conceptual backbone of chant-based canon.

This work does possess a context of sorts. Two other Josquin Masses, the Missa Sine nomine and the Missa De beata virgine, also have canonic Creeds based on this plainchant melody; so it would seem that Josquin tackled the same challenge three times over, arriving at three different solutions. Moreover the Creeds of the Missa Sine nomine and the Missa De beata virgine sometimes sound remarkably simi­lar to the Credo quarti toni, raising the possibility that the Cambrai setting was a prototype that the later Masses later cannibalized. In the Cambrai manuscript the Credo quarti toni is copied immediately after the Missa De beata virgine. Might Josquin therefore have drafted it to be part of that Mass, but quickly rejected it, composing instead the five-voice setting that then became standard? The theory has its appeal; but as so often with Josquin, we may never know the truth.